


Virtue #2 -- Fortitude

by NyteFlyer



Series: Virtues [2]
Category: Donald Strachey Mysteries (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canon Gay Relationship, Drama, Gay Romance, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-20
Updated: 2010-11-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 07:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NyteFlyer/pseuds/NyteFlyer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you don't control fear....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Virtue #2 -- Fortitude

You know how when something seems too good to be true, somewhere down the road you usually find out that it is? Well, that’s exactly how I felt about Timothy Callahan.

I guess the early days of my relationship with Timmy were a mixed bag for both of us. I was crazy in love with him from the start, and that scared me shitless. I was terrified of being happy to the degree Timmy made me feel happiness, scared to death that I’d get to trust it, to depend on it, then get knocked on my ass when life does what it always does and took it away. I know I had to have confused the hell out of him at first, clinging to him like the lifeline he was becoming to me then pushing him away, clinging then pushing him away, til he didn’t know from one day to the next whether he’d see me or not, whether I’d treat him like the love of my life or like my worst enemy. I don’t have the first clue why he stuck it out like he did, why he put up with my shit so patiently for those first two months or so instead of kicking me to the curb the way I more than deserved. I mean, it’s not like it didn’t faze him, that on again, off again game I was playing. It hurt him. I could tell how much it hurt him. And I hated myself for it. 

Looking back, I can see that I was testing him, testing the strength of his feelings for me, looking for the weak link in his love so I could go ahead and snap that chain and be done instead of going on indefinitely, torn between hope and misery, waiting for the inevitable to happen. You’d think I’d get a helluva lot of comfort from the fact that he stayed with me in spite of all the abuse I was dishing out. Instead, it fed my paranoia.

I carefully avoided having sex with him for those first couple of months. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him, because God knows I did want him, wanted him worse than anyone I’d ever wanted before. But I held back, partly because of my history as Albany’s premier gay whore. I had a rep like fifty miles of bad road, and I was scared he’d gotten wind of it, scared that if we took things to a physical level too fast, he’d worry that he was just one more curve in that road. As stupid as it sounds, I was scared, too, that after all those weeks of buildup, he’d be let down by me, disappointed in my performance in the sack. And that would have been a blow my ego just didn’t have thick enough armor to withstand. 

Above and beyond all that, I was worried about my HIV status. I’d always been careful, never coming into contact with anyone else’s bodily fluids and rarely even with their bare skin. I kept my encounters safe, distant, impersonal. But when you’ve blown every guy in a 20 mile radius, you can’t help but worry, you know? So the morning after that first dance in the moonlight, I scheduled an appointment with a free clinic and sweated bullets til the test came back with an all clear. I got retested a month after that, and once more just before our two month anniversary, hardly believing my good luck in coming out clean as a whistle after rolling around in filth for so long. If it was just me to consider, I wouldn’t have cared so much. If the tests had come back positive, I woulda been pissed, and I probably would have wallowed in self-pity. But I also would have figured I’d gotten exactly what I deserved. With Timmy added to the mix, it was a different story. I wouldn’t have risked passing something on to him for anything in the world. 

I got the results back on the morning of our anniversary. That night, I wined him and dined him, lingering over dinner until I finally had the balls to take him back to my place, tiny hole-in-the-wall apartment that it was. There, we made love for the first time. And it felt good, bring-me-to-my-knees, rock-my-world good. So fucking good I knew I could never settle for meaningless, back-alley blowjobs again. So good it scared the shit out of me.

I kissed him goodbye the next morning as he headed off to work, then spent the next three days avoiding his calls, hitting the fuck-you button every time his number popped up on my cell and feeling like the lowest common denominator piece of slime on the planet for doing it. On the fourth day, the calls stopped, and that scared me even worse. I lay in bed most of that day, avoiding work and my thoughts, drinking off and on as I stared at the crumbling ceiling panels above me. It was cold in the room, the wind howling outside, snow topped with ice topped with more snow caking on the window ledge. I needed to get up and crank up the heat, dig out an extra blanket and make sure the flashlight had batteries in case the power lines gave out under weight of the ice and the lights went off. There was nothing worth eating in the apartment, and I probably should have done something about that, too. I didn’t want to eat, though, couldn’t even think about it without getting sick through and through. My stomach hurt, and the thought of putting anything more solid than Maker’s Mark in it made me want to puke. 

Around eight, I forced myself off the bed and into the bathroom to take a piss, then to the cupboard above the kitchen sink to hunt for something else to drink. There was a knock at the door, tentative at first, then loud and firm when I didn’t answer. I gripped the chipped Formica counter, praying to a god I’d never believed in that whoever it was would give up and go away, but knowing damned well he wasn’t going anywhere. On the third round, he wasn’t knocking any more, he was pounding instead, beating on the door with both fists from the sound of it, calling my name, an edge of real fear in his voice.

“Don? Your car’s outside, so I know you’re in there. Damn it, say something so I know you’re all right!” 

“I’m all right,” I said, jerking the door open. It was the only real lie I ever told him.

He stood in my doorway, hands working their way into his pockets, shoulders hunched, eyes the saddest blue I’d ever seen. “I’m sorry I bothered you. When you didn’t answer my calls, I was afraid something had happened to you. I worry, you know?“

“I know,“ I said, not quite able to meet that painfully direct gaze of his.

He stood there just watching me for a minute or maybe an hour, waiting for an apology, I guess, for some explanation, some excuse for me slinking off with my tail between my legs like the coward I’d always known myself to be. Gradually, his jaw set, the worry on his face morphing into anger. 

“I need you to do something for me,” he said. “If you’ll do this one thing, I’ll never bother you again. I want you to tell me that you have no interest in pursuing this. That it’s over. That you don’t want to see me anymore.” 

My mouth was so dry it popped. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I love you.”

He didn’t smile, but his shoulders relaxed a little. “God, Donald, was that really so hard?”

“Yes.”

“Then do you mind telling me why you bothered saying it?”

I cleared my throat. “Because it’s true. Because I love you, and it wouldn’t be right for you to walk out of here without knowing that.”

He nodded. “I’ve tried not to put any pressure on you. I’ve tried not to rush you into anything that would make you uncomfortable.”

“You’ve been nothing but good to me,” I said.

“Then what is it, Don? What are you so afraid of?”

I couldn’t answer. I wanted so bad to tell him all about it, to tell him about the army, about Kyle, about the anger and the grief mixed with guilt that never gave me a minute’s peace. But I couldn’t. The shame still ran too deep in me. 

The sickening ache in my stomach I’d been trying to ignore since this whole thing started clamped down on my midsection so hard I couldn’t breathe. I pressed my back to the wall and slid down it until I sat on the floor, head in my hands. 

“I know you’re hurting,” he said. “I know how scared you are. I get it, Donald, I do. Something happened to you, something awful, and you can’t move past it. If it’s time you need, I can give you that.” He sighed, a sad, weary sigh. I felt like a total piece of scum for making him sigh like that. I could feel him watching me again, waiting for a response. When I didn’t say anything, he lowered himself to the floor and sat cross-legged in front of me, close, so close his knees rested on top of mine. He took hold of my wrists and pulled my hands away from my face, then lifted my chin, forcing me to look at him. 

“Fear’s a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you don’t control it, it controls you. The night of the banquet I promised you something. Do you remember what it was?”

I jerked my chin, trying to shake him off, but there was no give in him. He held me firmly in place. He wasn’t rough, just steady and unyielding. At that moment, I got a clear picture of who Tim was, of how things stood between us. He meant exactly what he said; he would never intentionally hurt me. But he wasn’t about to let me get away with shit, either. 

“What did I say, Donald?” he asked again.

“You wouldn’t break my heart,” I mumbled.

“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

“You said you wouldn’t break my heart.”

“We’ve known each other a couple of months now. You’ve seen me in a variety of situations. Have you ever known me to lie? About anything? Even a little white one for the sake of being polite?”

I didn‘t exactly have to think long and hard about that one. There wasn‘t a mean bone in Timmy‘s body, but there sure as hell were some brutally honest ones. He might have been a diplomat, but he was direct to a fault, and if you asked the man a question, you were guaranteed a straight, sometimes painfully blunt, answer. 

“No,” I said.

“Well, there you go, then.” He rose and dusted off the charcoal gray suit pants he’d probably ruined by wallowing on my grimy floor. Then he was gone.

I sat there for maybe a minute, bereft. Then I was scrambling to my feet and racing to the window, pounding on it until I broke through several layers of paint on top of old varnish and was able to slam it open. There he was, just coming out of the building and hitting the street, heading for the bus stop without so much as a backward look. 

“Tim!” I shouted. “Timothy!” But the wind was still howling, blowing in arctic air and a sprinkling of dry snow. I was six stories up, and between the wind and the crunch and scrape of the snow plows that were trying to clear the street, I figured there was no way he could hear me. I was about to give up and shut the window when I saw him reach into his pocket without slowing his pace and pull out something, then hold it high in the air. A salt truck passed, its headlights glinting on the cell phone in his hand. 

He picked up on the first ring. “Yes,” he said. Not yes with a question mark like he was asking something, but yes, period. The ball was clearly in my court, and I was afraid if I dropped it again, the game would be over for good. 

“Don’t leave me.” It was all I could think to say, all I could choke out without breaking down completely.

“I’m not the one who pulled away.”

Finally, I got it. The pain in his voice penetrated my thick skull in a way his words themselves couldn’t. I remembered the night of the banquet, watching his eyes following that asshole he’d come in with make endless circuits around the room, flirting with every guy there, ignoring Tim completely. Timmy never mentioned him again, hadn’t offered any more details of past relationships than I had. But his friends were protective of him, and they weren’t above dropping broad hints if they thought I’d benefit from them. I’d gotten the clear impression that the jerk hadn’t been an exception in his life, he’d been the rule. 

Timmy was as scared as I was. The only difference was that he had the strength, the fortitude, to deal with it.

“That night, I made you a promise, too. I said I’d stay by your side, no matter what.”

“So,” he said. Again, not followed by a question mark. Tim wasn‘t asking me anything. What he was doing was offering me an opening.

“So… I’m a total moron as far as this relationship stuff goes. I know this. But if you’ll hang in there with me, I’ll work on being less of one. Look, if I haven’t totally screwed up my chances with you, could you come back up? I’m really sorry,” I said, hearing a pleading note creep into my voice but not caring how it sounded, truly not giving a flying fuck, because what did dignity matter anyway if the best thing that had ever happened to me walked out of my life for good? “Come on, Timmy. It’s cold out. The buses probably aren’t even running this late, and you don’t have a coat or gloves….”

He spun on his heel, skidding a little on the icy sidewalk. I just about swallowed my tongue, terrified he’d go down and crack his skull. But he found his footing and started back toward my building at a pretty good clip. If you can hear a smile over the phone, I swear to God I heard one then. “I love you, too,” he said. 

The line went dead as he snapped his phone shut and shoved it into his pocket. Then he broke into a run. 


End file.
